Tuesday afternoon I had the honor of presenting a session at the Warsaw conference in memory of Ruth Ebner. Ruth died in Phoenix, way too young while I was at the 2016 IAJGS conference in Seattle, which I chaired. This session was Ruth’s family’s story. Many years ago, Ruth confided that, having been born in a DP camp and arriving in the US as an infant, although she had extended family already in the US, she felt as if she had just appeared on the scene with no background.

Through the course of the research, I learned a lot about not only Ruth’s family, but also about new (to me) repositories and databases. Like all research, this took time, but ultimately Ruth and I together identified several generations of her family in Europe and were able, also, to connect family stories to documentation.

While I was busy with this, Lina was working at the Ancestry booth in the Exhibit Hall, Lindsay and Rhoda were immersed in the archives in Warsaw, and Marek took a train to Kutno to do client research down there. Everyone returned with amazing finds. It will be weeks (maybe months) before we can actually finish processing and reading through all of this.

We had dinner at the Red Hog – a very interesting restaurant, at which I had eaten earlier in the week. For me, on the menu this time, was a delicious white fish baked in parchment. The previous time, I had a wonderful dessert – a dark chocolate shell with vanilla cream and blueberry ice inside. This time, Marek insisted that a friend who had joined us, and I finish dinner with a dark cherry liquor, which the reveals to be something like cherries in rum.

The days are long, and the hours of sleep are way too little. Tomorrow, Marek, Lina and I have an early morning presentation on Jewish Genealogy for the Unfamiliar. After that I have several hours of Ukraine SIG meetings, and then we will pick up the van and take off for Marijampolė, Lithuania. It will be our first border crossing.